Cloud Next-Generation Firewall as a Service (30-Day Free Trial to PAYG)

What do you like best about the product?

What I like most is the level of control it provides over network security, especially when I’m managing cloud workloads. The traffic visibility and threat-prevention features are genuinely useful, and being able to manage security policies from a single place makes day-to-day administration much easier. I also appreciate that it integrates well with cloud environments like AWS and Azure. Overall, the security capabilities feel strong, without needing to manage separate firewall solutions for every environment.

What do you dislike about the product?

The initial setup and configuration can feel a bit complicated, especially when you’re just getting started. There are quite a few settings to work through, and troubleshooting certain issues isn’t always straightforward. I also think the pricing is on the higher side, particularly for smaller environments. The documentation is decent overall, but adding more practical, real-world examples would make the process much easier.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

The main problem it helps solve is managing security across cloud workloads without having to handle everything separately. It gives clearer visibility into network traffic, helps identify potential threats, and makes firewall policy management more centralized. As a result, it can save time when monitoring and maintaining security across different environments. It also helps keep security policies consistent, which becomes especially useful as the cloud infrastructure grows and expands.

What do you like best about the product?

Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW is that it delivers centralized, scalable network security for cloud environments without creating significant additional operational overhead.

What do you dislike about the product?

One area I find challenging with Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW is the initial configuration and learning curve. Setting up policies, routing, integrations, and troubleshooting traffic flows can require a good understanding of both cloud networking and Palo Alto security concepts.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Palo Alto Networks helps us address two key security challenges. On the endpoint side, it provides secure global VPN connectivity for devices, so users can safely connect to corporate and cloud resources before they start work. On the cloud side, Cloud NGFW adds another layer of protection for applications and workloads running in AWS by controlling and inspecting network traffic and enforcing security policies.

For me, this means secure access to the infrastructure I work on, while also helping protect our cloud applications and services from unauthorized or potentially malicious network traffic. Overall, it gives us a consistent security layer across both user access and cloud environments.

What do you like best about the product?

I like the visibility and centralized control provided by Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW. It makes applying security policies, inspecting traffic, and troubleshooting network connectivity issues much easier. It helps us quickly identify whether traffic is allowed or blocked and troubleshoot connectivity issues from a central place. The initial setup was straightforward, and once the network configuration and security policies were defined, we could integrate it with our cloud environment and start monitoring. Overall, it's reliable and gives us good visibility and control over traffic while making troubleshooting easier.

What do you dislike about the product?

One area for improvement could be making the interface a little simpler and making troubleshooting information easier to find quickly. I'm looking mainly at the search and filter in logs, so we can quickly find the relevant traffic or error details while troubleshooting.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW to secure and control cloud traffic, prevent unauthorized access, and apply security policies, giving us better visibility and troubleshooting capabilities.

What do you like best about the product?

I really like that Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW automatically scales up or down based on real-time needs, which helps us manage resources efficiently. The native cloud integration, particularly with AWS, is another aspect I appreciate as it simplifies working within our existing infrastructure.

What do you dislike about the product?

I find setting up Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW for a specific environment like AWS a bit challenging. The workflow that bridges AWS infrastructure with the Palo Alto Network Management Console could be improved for a smoother integration experience.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW solves manual patches and offers the benefit of automatic scaling based on real-time needs.

What do you like best about the product?

I really like the visibility and control that Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW provides over our cloud traffic. The application-aware security policies are particularly helpful as they allow us to control traffic more precisely rather than just relying on IP and port-based rules. Additionally, I find the threat prevention and logging capabilities very beneficial for monitoring activity and investigating security or connectivity issues within our Azure environment. The initial setup process was also fairly straightforward once we defined our Azure networking and security requirements, and integrating and validating the traffic flow wasn't too challenging. This software provides advanced cloud network security, strong security policy controls, and offers good visibility into cloud traffic, which makes it especially useful for us.

What do you dislike about the product?

The main area that could be improved is the management experience as the environment grows. With more policies, workloads, and traffic flows, configuration can become harder to keep organized. Troubleshooting could also be more streamlined, particularly when investigating routing or policy-related issues. Better policy analysis, clearer configuration-change visibility, and tighter integration with Azure-native services would make day-to-day administration easier. As the environment grows, managing a larger number of policies, applications, and traffic flows can become more time-consuming. It would be helpful to have stronger policy analysis and dependency mapping to quickly understand which rules are being used and what could be safely changed or removed. More streamlined troubleshooting around routing and policy evaluation would also help. I would also appreciate clearer visibility into configuration changes and a simpler way to review differences between policy versions. These improvements would make day-to-day administration easier and reduce the effort required for troubleshooting and policy maintenance.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW to secure Azure traffic, enforce security policies, and get better visibility. It helps identify threats, inspect application and network traffic, and troubleshoot issues, which makes maintaining cloud workload security easier.

What do you like best about the product?

I find Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW incredibly valuable as it provides centralized management through integration with Panorama and cloud-native management consoles, making policy synchronization straightforward across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The high availability and autoscaling features automatically handle traffic spikes, eliminating the need for manual load balancer configuration. I appreciate its App-ID and Advanced Threat Prevention, as they offer top-tier Layer 7 traffic inspection and URL filtering without the operational overhead of software upgrades and manual scaling. I also find the initial setup to be straightforward and faster than deploying traditional virtual appliances, thanks to its fully managed cloud service delivery that doesn't require provisioning virtual machines or setting up load balancers. The seamless deployment via the cloud console and built-in autoscaling make it easy to get started. Overall, it's a solid product that meets enterprise security standards.

What do you dislike about the product?

The cost structure of Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW can be a downside. Even though it eliminates the need for virtual appliance maintenance, the combined cost of the service fee and data processing throughput can become quite expensive, especially for workloads with heavy bandwidth. Additionally, I've noticed log ingestion latency sometimes occurs. When I'm running complex queries through CloudWatch or using third-party SIEM log forwarders, there are slight delays during peak traffic analysis, which can be frustrating.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW to reduce operational overhead by replacing self-managed firewalls, ensuring consistent security across clouds with zero-trust inspection. It provides top-tier App-ID, threat prevention, and centralized management, making scaling and updates effortless without manual intervention.

What do you like best about the product?

What I like most about Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW is that it delivers strong cloud security without making the setup and management overly complicated. It feels like a practical mix of advanced protection, easy deployment, and centralized control.

What do you dislike about the product?

The biggest downside of Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW is the cost. It’s also not as flexible as a full-featured on-prem firewall, so teams that need advanced VPN or routing features may find it less useful.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Cloud NGFW helps solve the headache of managing traditional firewall infrastructure in the cloud. It gives us better visibility, stronger threat protection, and simpler policy management, so we can focus more on the business instead of firewall maintenance.

What do you like best about the product?

What I like best is how seamlessly it integrates into our cloud infrastructure. In my experience managing complex application operations and microservices, it provides robust threat protection and traffic filtering without adding heavy operational overhead or slowing down our DevOps workflows

What do you dislike about the product?

The initial setup for integrating its logs with our existing observability stack required more manual effort than expected. Additionally, managing granular security policies for rapidly changing Kubernetes microservices can sometimes feel rigid, which adds a bit of friction to our CI/CD deployment pipelines.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Before implementing this solution, maintaining deep visibility and secure traffic filtering across our complex microservices and containerized environments was challenging. We now use it to enforce granular security policies and secure our application ingress/egress traffic without slowing down our CI/CD pipelines. It ensures our infrastructure stays compliant and protected from threats, while allowing our operations team to maintain high deployment velocity.

What do you like best about the product?

I really appreciate the GUI of Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW; it's the best I've seen and makes managing policies and exclusions a breeze. I also love how well it integrates with other platforms, especially within the Palo Alto family, like Cortex, SASE, and XDR, as well as with other vendors like Microsoft Sentinel. The system operates exactly as promised in the documentation, and everything, including encryption, works flawlessly, which has saved my company from many attacks. The templates save us a lot of time during implementation, and the initial setup was very easy.

What do you dislike about the product?

The documentation can be problematic because it's being changed frequently, which makes it challenging to find updated instructions. Sometimes, when looking for setup guidance, the steps provided are outdated, aligned with older versions of the portal, and it can be difficult to find the right page for the current settings. If you're trying to follow the steps to access policies, the directions might not match what's currently available. This inconsistency in documentation is frustrating, and it would help if the old documentation were removed to avoid confusion.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW offers an excellent GUI, accurate policy matching, and up-to-date templates, streamlining system management. It integrates well with Sentinel and other Palo Alto platforms, simplifying tasks and enhancing security, which saved us from attacks.

What do you like best about the product?

The granular control over the traffic management like App ID, User ID makes monitoring and control more powerful. Centralized management of multiple devices makes device management easy and fast.

What do you dislike about the product?

The GUI of Palo Alto FW could be improved as it is not so user friendly for beginners. Also the initial setup and licensing cost is high compared to other NGFW. Initial deployment and managing growing rule sets can be difficult and confusing for new users

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Provides granular control over the traffic and provides better traffic visibility. Stops zero-day exploits, data exfiltration, and lateral movement between virtual networks.